Pitzer: The proposed water bond has been through an odyssey, repeatedly delayed. Do you think the time will be right next year for voters to write a check for another bond?
Leavenworth: I think it all depends. It’s clearly not going to be an $11 billion bond. But we don’t really have a clear sense from the governor’s offi ce what he’s thinking about. There are three pieces of legislation out there, so every kind of stakeholder group has put their fl ag down in the Senate. You’ve got Sen. Lois Wolk’s bill and she represents the Delta. There is Sen. Michael Rubio’s bill and he’s from the San Joaquin Valley. And there is Sen. Fran Pavley with a bill, but this all has to be worked out. I talked to Rubio and he doesn’t seem to be in a real hurry on all this. Like everybody else, he is waiting around to see kind of what the governor’s interests are. But those three want to be part of the discussion and that’s good. I think it’s really great that Wolk really wants to get involved because a number of her constituents would just as soon go to war instead of trying to fi gure out if there is a way to work these things out. It’s going to be an interesting discussion and we may not know until pretty late in the year kind of what direction they’re going.
Pitzer: Where do you folks draw the line between what we as a state should pay for as opposed to what benefi ciaries should pay for?
Hanak: Some of those concepts come out of economics and there’s not a “right” answer for all aspects of the issue. But I do think there’s a right answer for a piece of it, which is that benefi ciaries should pay for the infrastructure that they’re using in this sector, which mostly they do. Most of what we pay for in California in the water and wastewater sector comes from ratepayers, and that’s always been the assumption with this project – that the tunnel or the canal is what the water users are going to pay for. That’s the question Stuart
January/February 2013
raised as to whether it’s going to pencil out for them. The assumption with this project has been that a lot of the ecosystem enhancements would be paid for by the state as a whole because the damage to the Delta is not just caused by the export pumps. We’ve all got a hand in what’s happened over the last 150 years to that ecosystem. And that’s to me the one key piece in the water bond that we’re going to have to fi gure out something to do about: how are we going to handle that in order for BDCP to get approved? Without the bond there’s a hole there, and the fi sheries’ agencies cannot sign off on BDCP unless they have confi dence that that habitat work is going to get done.
Saracino: I think BDCP can’t be suc- cessful unless there is funding to do the habitat restoration component that’s going to be required. And keep in mind the bond got to $11 billion because that refl ected the political sensibilities of the time and what it required to actually get a bond that could be passed by the Legislature. Of course, we have a different Legislature now, and it’ll be interesting to see if we can get agreement on a bond that doesn’t include some of the things that people would like taken out. Storage for example; there’s a number of people or interest groups in the state that think the $3 billion in storage funds don’t belong in the bond. Well, that’s debatable. Some additional storage may be necessary in light of climate change, and it may also be necessary for environmental fl ow purposes. I don’t think we’ve studied that issue to the extent that we need to as a state to determine the role of storage in managing our water supplies in a sustainable way. But that’s just one component. And then you have all the “pork” that was in the bond as a lot of people claimed. But again, that may have been a political necessity in order to get it to the point where it could get passed. So it could be a real challenge to craft and pass the new bond that’s signifi cantly less than the $11 billion.